In icy, dicey bottom-of-the-world Antarctica, I melt when a fuzzy penguin chick hatches from a cracked egg underneath its feathered mother on a windswept pebbly beach. Over on another snowy isle, I listen to a smiling cat-faced Weddell seal magnificently sing, its melodic trills breaking the primal silence.

And now, our suddenly-very-small-seeming 10-person raft is surrounded by eight diving, pirouetting, humongous humpbacks, including one that glides so head-on close our inflatable Zodiac quickly reverses out of the way. Eons-old majestic glaciers tower in the distance as barnacled flukes flap in the air, blowholes spout, and another mega-ton marine behemoth thrillingly surfaces with a rippling splash at our rear.

After the electrifying show swims on, our Zodiac thumps, bumps and crunches over glistening sea ice, a nature-chiseled crystalline swan drifting alongside. Then, serenaded by a colony of squawking cartoon-cute chinstrap penguins on nearby rocks, our Abercrombie & Kent naturalist guide uncorks a bottle of Henri Abelé Brut Champagne in our bobbing raft. As we hoist glass flutes to this fantastical frosty frontier, all I can see of the bundled-up fellow passenger across from me are her hazel eyes flooding with tears.

A march of the Adelie penguins (some guano-stained) along the beach at Brown Bluff in Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

A Weddell seal relieves an itch while resting on a snow bank in Mikkelsen Harbor, Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Sound

The gallery will resume inseconds

Antarctic icebergs look like they’re chiseled by a human artist, but Mother Nature is the sculptor. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

A humpback whale shows its fluke as it feeds in Cierva Cove in Antarctica’s summer waters. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

About 6,500 boisterous breeding pairs of gentoo penguins live on Cuverville Island in Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

An Adelie penguin shelters its infant at Brown Bluff, where thousands of penguins nest. Penguin parents take turns protecting babies and going out to dive for fish and krill to bring back. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

An old dilapidated boat sits on the beach at Half Moon Island in Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Webbed-feet busybodies look out over Paradise Bay in Antarctica, a continent populated by millions of penguins. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

Abercrombie & Kent passengers walk on marked paths so as not to disturb the wildlife in Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

A Zodiac looks like a toy boat against the ice-clogged expanse of Antarctica. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

The bow of an Abercrombie & Kent ship seems headed straight at a luminous iceberg in Antarctica’s seas. (Photo by Norma Meyer)

I so get it. Antarctica isn’t a destination — it’s an exceptionally emotional experience. You’re just a speck in this vast unforgiving Land Before Time that is inhabited by uniquely adapted wildlife, has no permanent human residents, and is the coldest, windiest, driest, most remote, ravishingly pure continent on Earth. And with climate change affecting it, there is deep concern about its future. I came here nearly four years ago and was dying to return. For this trip last December, I’m joined by my husband — we chose this top-notch A&K expedition for our anniversary knowing the tour company shines. Just ask my spouse who, after nippy outings, can be found sipping a complimentary martini in the sixth-deck Observation Bar of our sleek ship, Le Lyrial, while the pianist plays Sinatra tunes and grandiose turquoise-tinged icebergs resembling the Sphinx and Sydney Opera House magically slide by.

Except on the day titanic waves fueled by gale-force winds crash against the bar’s floor-to-ceiling windows. More later on that high seas saga when we traverse the infamously turbulent Drake Passage on our rollicking return.

The White Continent doesn’t have hotels and roads so the only way to truly explore it is by ship with often-wet Zodiac landings. Our 12-day eco-conscious “Classic Antarctica” voyage begins when our A&K group of 189 intrepid travelers meets in Buenos Aires (we’re treated to a tango performance and visit to Eva Perón’s grave) and the next morning flies to Ushuaia, the planet’s southernmost city at Argentina’s tip. There we board our chic floating home-away-from-home, equipped with everything from dapper suited butlers to waterproof gumboots in our size.

Many of us sport seasick-deterring ear patches because to and from Antarctica each way takes 2 1/2 days of which 36 hours are on the notorious Drake Passage, dubbed the “roughest seas in the world.” Luckily, going we have a relatively calm “Drake Lake” instead of the still-to-throttle “Drake Shake.” Hours are filled by educational talks from our passionate expedition team; our leader Kara Weller has been to Antarctica 163 times. “It makes you feel so small and humble. Simply, it’s the most beautiful place on earth,” she says, clearly awed.

Eventually, the empty horizon is pierced by the staggering sight of our first ginormous iceberg: an 11-mile-long, five-mile-wide,105-feet-tall flat-topped berg that looks like a frozen walled medieval city. On-board geologist Jason Hicks explains it broke off a large ice shelf — likely due to climate change — and he notes Antarctica has lost three trillion tons of ice since 1992 and is warming at an unprecedented rate.

In one more day (and it’s hard to tell with 22 supernatural hours of light), we eagerly plant our boots on the seventh continent … let the penguin escapades begin! Armies of dinky tuxedoed comics are lined up on the dramatic cliffside shores of Brown Bluff as if to greet the Zodiacs bringing Jolly Red Giants clad in keepsake cherry-bright parkas.

Hilarious honking Adelie penguins dutifully follow each other, slip, slide, hop, belly-flop, rush together into the ocean, rush together out of the ocean and individually veer off their trodden “highways” to cross our paths unafraid. Several times, I sit on the ground and a quizzical Disney-eque penguin waddles right up to my thigh.

Most incredibly, thousands of Adelie penguins — and a contingent of orange-beaked gentoo penguins — are either incubating eggs or warming fluffy gray newborns. Underneath one mother, a hatchling pecks at its shell inside until it emerges fuzz-face first. I can’t get enough of these characters. Habitual rock-stealing adult penguins swipe pebbles from a neighbor’s nest and plop them on their own mate’s stone nest — “It’s like your husband bringing you chocolate,” says our marine biologist Sabina Mense. Penguin partners loudly bray in a bonding “ecstatic display,” and swiftly swap positions taking turns to guard eggs or teeny offspring.

Only sometimes, they’re not fast enough. In a heart-wrenching second, a hovering skua bird swoops down and snatches a baby chick to eat. Danger also lurks offshore; a murderous leopard seal patiently waits for its next full-grown penguin victim.

As our ship moves about (with three orca whales, countless seabirds and crabeater seals making cameos), the daily weather-dependent plan is for two Zodiac excursions. (Guests go in two shifts since Antarctic environmental regulations limit 100 people at a given spot.) Being summer here, temperatures hover around 30 degrees so layered-up it’s fine. We’ll have sun, ominous leaden skies, dense fog, rain, hail and snow — once in a single day. Wind gusts are so fierce during a steep hike on Cuverville Island, I have to hunch down and dig my walking stick into the ice to avoid being body-slammed down. Gentoo penguins nonchalantly toddle by, surely thinking, “What a wimp.”

In Mikkelsen Harbor, we alight from Zodiacs to find a half-dozen hefty Weddell seals — the planet’s most southerly mammals — lonesomely lounging atop snow. An arm’s length from us, one scratches its grinning kittenish face with clawed flipper and gazes unfazed at camera-clickers. “They’re so docile, you could cuddle up next to one and snooze,” Mense says.

Every outing wows — the rookery of achingly adorable chinstrap penguins who look like they’re wearing black helmets, the two molting elephant seals snuggling in desolate ice, a singing Weddell seal chirping an aria in the frigid abyss. For a real taste of inhospitable Antarctica, we trek through driving wet snow to a gaping crater on volcanic Deception Island, a phenomenal ash-laden black-and-white landscape. It’s like stepping into an Ansel Adams photograph. Back onboard, the spa’s estheticians give gratis much-appreciated de-thawing hand massages in the panoramic lounge.

Another afternoon, our Zodiac is skimming among immense ethereal icebergs that look frosted with baby-blue cake icing, when one house-sized formation stunningly collapses in a powerful explosion of powder and completely disappears underwater. Our naturalist, Helen Ahern, quickly zooms us away, fearful of a tidal wave.

To put the bucket-list bonanza in perspective, passengers gather in the ship’s theater for daily lectures and lively cocktail-hour recaps from the expedition team. The ornithologist helps us differentiate penguins (Adelies are “neurotic”); the geologist warns about climate-change deniers; the photography coaches project striking images of our day. Following the humpbacks’ ballet, Ahern tells the roomful, “Scientists don’t get down here annually. And what we have seen today, scientists would give their eye teeth for.” She urges us to become “citizen scientists” and upload our photos of whale flukes — “the underside is like the fingerprint for a whale” — to a website for marine mammal experts to study.

Meanwhile, ghosts of polar explorers lurk. In Port Charcot, we hoof to a hilltop rock cairn left in 1904 by a French expedition that arrived on a three-masted schooner with a pet pig. Those brave seamen battled scurvy; we’re battling too much five-course fine cuisine. Where else is dessert a chocolate-praline three-masted boat festooned with a candy penguin and dusted with a cocoa ampersand from the A&K logo?

It’s weird to think that besides our shipmates, the only other upright terrestrials we encounter in Antarctica are a handful of Chilean researchers at a small military outpost set amidst a gentoo colony. (No one owns the 5.5 million-square-mile continent but various countries run scientific bases.) The officers, who seem elated to meet non-feathered friends, welcome us with Nescafe and chocolate chip cookies served on their kitchen table.

Again, we’ve got to cross the 600-mile Drake, named for explorer Sir Francis. This time it won’t be a “lake.” We’re told to stash breakables and literally hang tight. While nibbling lunch in Deck 2’s restaurant (thankfully, those scopolamine ear patches work), smashing waves drench windows as if we’re inside a washing machine, eliciting a spellbound chorus of “Whoaaa!” Passengers walk like drunk penguins, sometimes into a wall. Colossal waves nearly top 30 feet. On the wind-speed Beaufort Scale — 12 being “hurricane” — we’re a “strong gale” 9 although we briefly hit 11. Honestly, it’s exciting! Safe in the captain’s expert hands, many of us revel in the rock-and-reeling adventure on this epic waterway that once swallowed explorers’ boats. Plus we earned “Drake Shake” bragging rights.

Too soon, my husband and I are back in “civilization,” which now sounds ironic. But the peaceful solitude of Antarctica sticks in our souls. Like others on this stellar journey, we came as tourists and returned as advocates for an unparalleled — and imperiled — place others may never see.

If you go

Abercrombie & Kent’s 13-day “Classic Antarctica” expedition departs Dec. 7 and is all-inclusive (gratuities, pre-cruise hotel, alcohol, custom parka to take home and more). Rates begin at $12,995. Our trip had a limited-time discount, so check for special savings. A&K also sails two other Antarctica itineraries, abercrombiekent.com.